Customers seek lower limit on credit cards

NEW DELHI: It is summer holiday time but customers are calling in their credit card companies to lower the credit limit on their cards, especially if they are travelling abroad, worried that they may be tempted to overspend.

Some of them are also worried about credit card frauds.

"Yes, we do receive such calls from customers. Today, there is a lot of awareness among card holders who plan most of their vacation well in advance and want to minimise their spending," said CEO SBI Cards and payment services, Kadambi Narahari.

As an extra precaution SBI cards offer to replace the plastic if a customers has used the card during his vacation abroad. "Such instances have happened where cloning of card was done and card was misused," he said.

A senior official with Punjab National Bank said that they also receive similar requests from card holders. "But then there are some customers who want to enhance the limit as well," he said.

According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, at the end of March 2012 the number of cards outstanding dropped to 17.65 million, compared to 18.04 million at the end of March 2011. But credit card spend jumped to Rs 96,613 crore from Rs 75,516 crore during the same period.

As per an HSBC survey, the number of credit card-holders declined by two basis points to 21% in 2011 in the country, despite a major rise in the number of premium card-holders which rose to 29% of the total number.

"People are using cards for basic purposes such as air tickets and utilites payment. Also, there are more place where cards are accepted," said Narahari. RBI data shows that at present there are over 90,000 ATMs and 6.5 lakh PoS terminals in the country.